Karl Rove's Biggest Mistake (convinced all Repubs that Iraq is a winner)

Stephen Schlesinger
06.22.2006

Karl Rove's Biggest Mistake

The guru of the Republican Party, Karl Rove, fresh from skirting an indictment in the Valerie Plame case, has manically plunged back into the political game again. He is up to executing one of his oldest tricks -- using his venerable playbook of turning a weakness into a plus. Somehow he has convinced the entire Republican Party that the Iraq war is a winner in the 2006 Congressional elections, not a loser.

This I gotta see. With polling data showing for months that the American people oppose the war, Karl Rove is going to apparently single-handedly make "cut and run" into the slogan that defeats the Democrats this Fall? This is up there with his Social Security crusade that turned out to be such a great success last year. Let's hear Rove convince the parents of the two US soldiers who were tortured and killed earlier this week or the relatives of the four American soldiers slain yesterday in Iraq -- or the American public which has watched this repeated mayhem for months now -- that the Bush plan to stay indefinitely in Iraq is the answer to this forlorn, mistaken war. Sacrificing more American troops simply to uphold Bush's honor no longer computes in a conflict that now has lasted (since 9/11) longer than the American involvement in the entire second World War.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-schlesinger/karl-roves-biggest-mista_b_23550.html